President and CEO, Hiscock Legal Aid Society

I'm Linda Gehron, I'm the President and CEO of the Hiscock Legal Aid Society. We serve low-income people in Onondaga County in need of legal services. There are criminal appeals cases, civil legal services that include divorce, custody, child support, income maintenance, immigration, housing, and a number of other cases. We have our family court program, which handles custody, child support, child welfare cases, and then finally our parole program, which represents people who are serving parole and now may have to go back and serve some more time for violating their parole. So, I'm responsible for the overall management of the office. We have 70 employees, a little more than 30 attorneys, and then a little more than 30 law assistants and administrative staff. So, overall management to make sure that attorneys are well trained and supervised and supported, and the same with the support staff law assistants, make sure that they're well trained and able to handle support to the attorneys, and that we're doing our best job as we possibly can representing clients, and serving as many clients as we possibly can. Also, just responsible for the overall fiscal management and legal management of the organization. Every now and then I'll be involved in a case just as a, in a supervisory role if there's a very unusual case, one needing some expert attention. I'll work with what we call our management team to sort of problem solve on the case. And then every now and then, a client might not be happy with our services, and then I'm glad to talk with them and try to make sure that we can, you know, make sure they're getting the service that they need.